The Incompleteness of Duration: Novelty and Its Denials

Abstract

Bergson’s assertion that psychological duration is a fait accomplissant and not a fait accompli may sound like a truism; who would deny that psychological time as well as time in general is by its own nature incomplete, something which is not given at once, something which is gradually growing? Even those thinkers who most intransigently deny the objective reality of succession eventually concede its reality on the psychological or, as they say, on the ‘phenomenal’ level; otherwise it would be meaningless to speak of its illusory character. I may well deny the reality of change outside of my mind, but not within my own consciousness; otherwise how could I have the illusion of change?1